Top seed Sabalenka crashes out of Kremlin Cup against Alexandrova

It was not meant to be for Aryna Sabalenka and the Kremlinc Cup as the Belarussian player lost in her 2nd match back from COVID-19. Sabaelnka showed vulebrabiliy in her game in the first match and that was the case today as well. Her opponent played a very solid match from start to finish and it was enough to defeat Sabalenka who is clearly still finding her way back to playing shape after catching the virus.

Alexandrova arrived in Moscow in very shaky form not winning consecutive matches for over a month. She finally did it here with another solid performance. From the start, the Russian knew what she was doing keeping Sabalenka off her rhythm. She did not concede a single break point while breaking her opponent twice en route to the 6-3 1st set finish.

Sabalenka had many issues on her 2nd serve in the first set with Alexandrova finding ways to end those points quickly. Aryna has a more powerful game but by keeping rallies short Alexandrova never allowed her to find a rhythm. That changed a little bit in the 2nd set as Sabalenka was more solid overall but her serves were not going at all.

She hit below 50 % of her first serves and that allowed Alexandrova too many chances. Even with improved play the Russian player was able to patiently wait for her chance. It came later in the match at 4-5. Alexandrova converted it to win the match. Overall a weak performance by Sabalenka who had a 2-0 lead in the 2nd set and also 3 consecutive break points at 4-4.